Hereditary player

Nearing the end of his first year as chief executive officer of Brit Insurance Holdings, Dane Douetil talks to Richard Adams about the firm's push into the provinces, the impending hard market and why insurance broking is in his blood

For Dane Douetil, whose father was a Lloyd's broker and whose grandfather refused to insure the HMS Titanic, resisting the world of insurance was always going to be difficult - despite his best efforts.

It was a Willis Faber Dumas graduate scheme that eventually tempted him off the fence after university, which he attended mainly to delay the inevitable. But, having subsequently built and run his own brokerage and taking the helm of Brit Insurance earlier this year, Douetil has firmly made the